Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Pepsi disguises another famous athlete to prank unsuspecting people. Donning glasses and a fake goatee, world famous NASCAR driver Jeff Gordon pranks a car salesman into taking a test drive with him in a 2009 Chevy Camaro. "I don't know if I can handle it," said a disguised Jeff Gordon to the unsuspecting car salesman. "I've never driven anything like this before." "I think a way to really make you feel comfortable would be to put you behind the wheel," replied the salesman.

And off they went doing wheelies and sharp turns while going at max speeds. The video, of course, was sponsored by Pepsi Max, which previously disguised NBA All Star Kyrie Irving as an old man named "Uncle Drew" who dominated streetball games....

In a world where half of Facebook posts are now images, Web editors swoon over responsive design and brands place photos in tweets, it’s clear the Internet has become a more visual place. Now, one company is looking to exploit the love of pictures with a product that both editors and advertisers can use to make digital images more interactive, engaging and, perhaps most importantly, super shareable.

"If you communicate through an image, people engage with it—we know that because of Facebook," said Neil Vineberg, CMO of the two-year-old startup ThingLink. "And if you put content inside an image, the engagements go crazy." Vineberg observed that images embedded with videos, annotations or links see clickthrough rates of as much as 50 percent.

Forbes recently started using ThingLink to enhance its storytelling on the Web, turning a pictorial of the Forbes 400 into an interactive infographic complete with videos, story links and data. Want to know more about Oprah or Warren Buffet? Just hover over a button embedded in the picture, then click. Some 100,000 other publishers have signed on....